Why Sexual Pleasure Must Be Included in #MeToo Conversations

This piece is part of Not Your Fault, a Teen Vogue campaign that aims to educate people about the epidemic of sexual assault. For more on this series, click here.

In this op-ed, author Jaclyn Friedman explains why the #MeToo movement needs to amplify more stories about survivors reclaiming their sexuality and using it to heal their trauma.

After I was sexually assaulted in college, sex was part of my path back to wholeness. It's true that being assaulted did real damage to my ability to experience sex, though not always in the ways you might think. In the aftermath of the attack, a friend I didn’t know that well told me that if he could, he would take my pain away. I gave it to him and fell hard, into a torrid, all-consuming relationship. It felt like magic, like reparations from the universe for letting me suffer so much at the hands of a different man. But in reality, I was putting him in charge of my happiness, not healing and rebuilding it for myself. When he dumped me out of the blue, all that pain came back with interest due.

That's the story you expect to hear from a survivor. But here's one you don't hear that much: Sex also healed me. After that disastrous affair, I went back to the drawing board and rebuilt my sexuality and sex life from the ground up. I felt like these core assumptions I'd had about my body — that it was mine, that I was safe in it — had been demolished, and if those things weren't true, who knew what was? I carved out time and space to be alone and listen to myself, to grieve and question. That's when I started to discover things. Like that I didn't need to have a partner to have an orgasm.

Sexual pleasure as an avenue for healing from the trauma of sexual assault is not a narrative that has gotten much airtime as we sift through #MeToo story after #MeToo story, and that will likely continue through Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Rightfully, there will continue to be coverage about the fact that our current POTUS stands accused by more than a dozen women, that colleges continue to sweep sexual violence under the rug, that being an active bystander can make all the difference. There will be a lot of sad and infuriating stories to absorb and some really good calls to action that we should heed. But there's another, more intimate, connection between sex and rape that's still taboo: the sex lives of survivors.

Admittedly, more and more people are coming to understand that we can’t address sexual violence without transforming the culture that surrounds sex. When we stop treating sex as a zero-sum game through which men are affirmed, male pleasure is prioritized, and women degraded and start treating it like a creative collaboration between two (or more) equal partners of any gender, sexually violent behavior will stop seeming normal.

The dominant myth that sexual assault leaves victims too damaged for sex is an overwhelming problem. In many ways, that’s because it can be so hard to get taken seriously as a survivor in the first place. If you already enjoy sex before you get raped, you’ll be accused of having asked for it, or liking it, or being essentially unrapeable. (Just ask the woman who accused Kobe Bryant or pretty much any sex worker.) If you don’t present as sufficiently damaged by the assault, the courts may find that you didn’t act victimized enough to deserve justice. (Just ask the women who accused Jian Ghomeshi.) And if you embrace sex — especially kinky or casual sex — as you heal, you’ll have to suffer the clucking “concern” of those who believe they know better than you about your own sex life, telling you that you’re acting out your trauma and need to be saved from yourself.

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Sexual assault is, at its core, an assault on a person’s autonomy. It is an attempted negation of our sovereignty over our bodies and our humanity. That survivors should then be forced to deny our own sexual desires in order for that violation to be taken seriously is adding injury to injury by flattening our beautiful dimensions and denying us powerful paths to healing in the process.

After my assault, I slowly found my way back into my body, and as I did, I found a new love for it. Where previously I had taken it for granted, focusing more on who desired me than what I myself desired, now I became a ferocious advocate for my body’s boundaries and appetites. I give it as much as I can of whatever feels good and protect it fiercely from the things that make it freeze up. Sometimes, when I find a partner who makes me feel safe and hot at the same time, I’m happily monogamous. Sometimes I get my needs met with multiple people. Sometimes I play around with power dynamics and fantasies; sometimes I like it vanilla and tender. None of these approaches are healthier than the other. None are signs that I am forever broken. In fact, I’ve become strong at the broken place: living through someone using my body as a weapon against me has taught me to never take my own pleasure or sovereignty for granted.

The one thing all survivors have in common is that someone took control of our body against our will. We have all been victimized. But we shouldn’t have to choose between being “good” victims and being fully human. It may happen to be April right now, but to be honest, it’s never not Sexual Assault Awareness Month for us. We have to find ways to live, even with that constant awareness. We are no less victims if we find a way back to joy. In fact, managing to reclaim our pleasure — whether through sex or any other means — in the aftermath of sexual violence is a triumph, proof positive that we are stronger than the people who tried to erase us through violence. This April, and every month, let’s refuse to be silenced about our sexualities and celebrate them instead.